Faces in the Mind
by YenSerenity
Summary: In a cruel world the mind can be the cruelest place, and Sherlock finds himself in a nightmare where he must face what he has done and what he has felt, with no facts as a buffer. Post Reichenbach. First-person. One-shot for now.


**It began.**

_A contorted face loomed in and out of the gray water that filled my senses. I was only half asleep as I watched the face changing shape._

It was my skull; the one I talked to before John. I recognized the teeth. One was missing; but before I could notice anything else, the face changed.

It was John. The gray water darkened around his eyes and mouth; bruises? Or was this the skull?

Now it was Mrs. Hudson, fear in her eyes as she backed away from me. She became younger and became Molly Hooper, her timid eyes wide with fear. She was screaming in terror, and I couldn't say a word. I reached out to her and my hand brushed against something hard and smooth. Bone.

This skull was different from the first. The eye sockets are dark and empty but intense… like others, living ones, I have seen. Deep and waiting, drawing me into a never-ending puzzle. Even without solid eyes, I recognized this gaze.

I smile back at them. On either side of death he taunts me, bragging that he knows something I don't. Neither of us knows if he is right, so the game continues; but it, too, lasts only a moment before the scene transforms.

Now I'm hovering over a slab at St. Bart's, studying the body of a murder victim. This is not unusual; but this case is different.

The victim is half-covered, since all I need to look at is the one long, deep incision from her right hand up her arm to the neck. The knife started at the hand, then went up to it's fatal destination. This is highly unusual. And, it must have hurt the victim incredibly. I brush the thought away to focus on the evidence. I'm examining the cut to figure the shape of the blade, before retreating to the obvious.

"This killing style…He was trained in the South East," I tell Molly, who remains a shadowy presence behind me in the lab.

"He was?" She asks timidly. It takes me a moment before I explain more.

"The man who killed her." I'm examining the dead woman's hand now. The cut is deep across the palm, between the thumb and… but something else seems wrong about it. I shake my head and hold out my hand.

"Pass me the scalpel, Molly. I need to see…"

"It hurt," comes her small, quivering voice.

"Scalpel… Molly? Wait; what?" I turn to her. She's not there.

"John?"

No response. I'm speaking to an empty room again.

I turn back to the hand I'm examining.

And realize that it's Molly's hand.

I jump back, shaking my head, and hear someone moaning. _No…_

"Molly!" I look around the room, blinking rapidly, noticing how the gray water is now pouring out of all the cabinets, rising up out of the floor.

I slosh through it, back to the murder victim—Molly- and patting her hand reassuringly.

"Don't worry, Molly, you're not really dead," I tell her. I worry that my voice doesn't sound convincing enough for an ordinary person.

My words are lost on her, though, and turn on me like knives. My body feels fine, but some other part of me feels impaled.

_Don't worry… not really dead… what a thing for _you_ to say to the friends mourning you… _I brush that voice aside. Suddenly the room is still.

"It hurt," comes her small voice again in my ear. I shake my head and look at her face now.

Suddenly her eyes open. Those wide, waiting, willing eyes, looking at me as if I'd hurt her. Even I couldn't avoid understanding what that look meant.

"_No. You are fine." I cover my ears and turn my head away from her ashen face, the blood on her thin lips, her limp hand. "Stop it. Just stop it."_

I will myself awake.

My heartbeat is pounding in my ears and I feel sick to my stomach. I do my best to ignore it, but it just gets worse. It doesn't really matter.

Natural light seeps through the window of this apartment in New York City. The sun will be up soon, and I am far away from England.

I get up too quickly, and the room spins.

_Falling. At least I have practice._

My vision goes dark. The blood in my head pounds as deafeningly as a waterfall, and I fall flat on my face on the floor without feeling a thing.

Just as I lose consiousness, I hear a voice in my room. And I don't think it's the skull.

"Oh dear; it looks like you forgot to eat again, Sherlock."

_**A/N:** This is a one-shot, but I would like to add more if there's interest. __So please review & tell me what you loved, hated, can suggest, or hope for this story._

_ Thank you for reading! :)_


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